The air inside the Flickering Grotto smelled of burnt ozone and copper—the unmistakable scent of a fresh monster kill and destabilized mana. Akira Kurogane, a low-ranking Awakened hunter, hated this smell. It was the scent of danger, of meager profit, and of the reason his sister, Miyuki, was dead.
He worked low to the ground, his back aching, his cheap, reinforced gloves slick with coagulated monster blood. His official rank in the Hunter Association was E-Minus, a generous rating for someone whose core Attributes hovered stubbornly around the baseline:
Attribute Value
Strength (STR): 5
Agility (AGI): 6
Vitality (VIT): 7
Intelligence (INT): 10 (his only saving grace)
Perception (PER): 8
Mana (MP): 3 (pathetic)
He had awakened with a tiny spark of Mana Capacity and zero Affinities—a statistical anomaly that relegated him permanently to the bottom rungs. He wasn't a hero; he was a Dungeon Cleaner, following in the wake of proper hunters, hoping to salvage enough for his nine-year-old niece, who was currently waiting in a cramped apartment above a laundromat.
"Come on, come on," Akira muttered, prying open the jaw of a desiccated Grotesque Hound. The main hunter team—the 'Silver Spears'—had been thorough, leaving behind only the scraps and the terrifying knowledge that the Boss was still alive, simmering in a deeper chamber.
His target was the Mana Stone, a crystallized energy source that replaced the heart in most monsters. A large one could fetch enough to cover rent.
He plunged his specialized scavenging knife into the Hound's chest cavity, digging past calcified ribs. The process was sickening, but necessary. Just one decent stone, just one. His sister had died trying to clear a Dungeon Break two years ago—the horror of the portal ripping open, spewing Chaos Ghouls into their city, still haunted his nightmares. He was still alive, and because of that, his niece lived under his care. That single responsibility was the only thing that kept him going.
As his hand scraped against the spine, something felt wrong. The wall he was leaning against was not the rough-hewn basalt of the Grotto. It was smooth, impossibly warm, and vibrated with a faint, low hum.
Akira, driven by an Awakener's heightened but untrained Perception, pulled his hand back. He cleaned the blood off the stone surface and examined it closer. Where the rough dungeon rock should have been, a seamless slab of black, obsidian-like material was wedged. Faint, intricate inscriptions—too fine to be carvings—glowed with residual mana, almost hidden beneath the grime.
Hunters wouldn't miss this. Miners wouldn't miss this.
This wasn't a simple loot cache. This was hidden.
Driven by a desperate, hopeful greed that only a man providing for an orphan could understand, Akira ran his fingers over the glyphs. They pulsed faintly under his touch. Following an instinct that bypassed his low Intelligence stat, he pressed a sequence: center, left, top-right.
With a whisper of displaced air, the entire slab retracted into the wall, revealing a narrow, ancient chamber.
The room was tiny, untouched by the brutal chaos of the modern dungeon. Murals lined the walls, depicting monstrous forms and figures manipulating glowing energy—a power far beyond what modern Affinities could achieve.
In the center, resting on a dull stone pedestal, was a book.
It wasn't made of paper or leather, but of interlocking plates of iridescent silver metal, bound by threads of pure, humming energy. It was the source of the heat, the low thrumming that had caught his attention. It wasn't just a book; it was a relic.
The Arbiter's Codex.
Akira's heart hammered against his ribs. This was no common treasure. This was a Jackpot.
He reached out, his Awakened-but-weakened Mana Sense screaming both warning and promise. As his fingers brushed the silver cover, the world shattered.
The Codex didn't open. It didn't lift. It dissolved, surging not into his body, but into his very Soul Force.
A scream was torn from his throat, soundlessly absorbed by the dungeon walls. He collapsed, clutching his head as a torrent of data, power, and foreign consciousness flooded his mind.
When the agony subsided, Akira was no longer in the hidden room.
He stood in a Void.
Infinite blackness stretched around him, broken only by a dizzying complexity of silver threads. They stretched out, pulsing with light, connecting him to everything: the wall he'd just opened, the Grotesque Hound's corpse, the sleeping Boss deeper in the dungeon, and even the distant, frantic energy of his niece back in the city.
"Welcome, Arbiter." The voice was silent, yet louder than any thunder—a collective echo of forgotten epochs.
A geometric interface—unseen, unheard by anything but him—snapped into existence behind his eyes.
$$The Arbiter's Codex has Bonded with Host: AKIRA KUROGANE$$
Unique Access Granted: Reality Thread Manipulation.
New Attributes Acquired:
Luck: 1 (Baseline)
Soul Force: 5 (New Core Attribute)
Attribute Buffs Applied:
PER +5 (Increased Perception of Mana and Threads)
MP +10 (Mana Capacity Stabilized)
New Affinity Unlocked: Shadow (Level 1)
Unique Skill Acquired: Soul Echo
— [Trial 001: Integration] Initiating. —
Akira gasped, staring at his hands. They were now surrounded by a faint, wispy darkness. He didn't feel weak; he felt connected. The threads hummed under his metaphysical fingers, showing him every weak point, every fault line, every flow of energy in the dimension he occupied.
A single thread near his foot tightened, then coalesced into a beast far more terrifying than the Grotesque Hounds. It was a mass of pure, writhing shadow—a creature drawn directly from the Codex's trial data. Its eyes were two burning embers of crimson malice.
"Trial: Survive. Prove your worth, Arbiter."
The Shadow Crawler lunged.
Akira moved, not through thought, but through Thread Guidance. His body instinctively followed the Agility thread that had surged into his system. He sidestepped the attack, the creature's claws missing by an impossible centimeter.
AGI: 6 → 8 (Trial Buff)
He threw out his hand. The newly granted Shadow Affinity responded, a wave of cool, dense darkness slamming into the Shadow Crawler. It hissed, its form temporarily destabilized.
$$Affinity Skill: Shadow Strike (Unstable) Activated$$
The fight was brutal, fast, and terrifyingly efficient. Akira discovered that his pathetic base Mana was being cycled and amplified by the Codex's Soul Force. He was a conduit now, a weapon. He used the shadowy remnants of his Shadow Strike to mask his movements, darting and weaving like a true combat hunter.
Finally, he noticed a red thread running directly through the creature's spine—a literal weak point highlighted by his new Reality Perception. He channeled a desperate surge of Shadow Mana and thrust his arm forward.
The Shadow Crawler shrieked, dissolving into a swirling cloud of Silver Dust.
Silence. The Void stabilized.
$$Trial 001 Complete. Rewards Granted:$$
Attribute Permanent Increase: Perception +1. Agility +1.
Affinity Upgrade: Shadow (Level 2)
Soul Echo: Permanent ability to absorb a fragment of a defeated entity's power/emotion/memory. (Current Stacks: 1 - Shadow Crawler's Malice).
He was back in the hidden room. The obsidian slab was closed, seamless, as if the last five minutes of impossible power and cosmic realization had never happened.
Akira—the struggling low-rank cleaner—was gone. In his place stood Akira Kurogane, the Arbiter. He looked at his full stats:
Attribute Value
Strength: 5
Agility: 9
Vitality: 7
Intelligence: 10
Perception: 14
Mana: 13
Luck: 1
Soul Force: 5
His eyes, enhanced by the massive jump in Perception, locked onto the ceiling. He could see the mana flow in the stone, the faint tremors of the dungeon's living structure, and the dense, dark presence of the Boss two levels below.
And then, his focus returned to the seamless wall. The Codex had given him an incredible advantage, but it was also a curse—he was now tied to a system no one else could see, forcing him to grow in a world that would happily crush a low-rank hunter.
He carefully pushed the wall to slide it open again, leaving the hidden room behind. He had a niece to provide for, and now, a power to master.
As he walked past the remains of the Grotesque Hound, ignoring the measly Mana Stone he had originally sought, the dungeon itself began to shift. The air grew colder. The threads he saw now were agitated. The death of the Shadow Crawler had disturbed something fundamental.
The dungeon is reacting to the Codex.
He was no longer just a cleaner. He was a beacon.
He had to get out, and fast. But as he turned to leave, a wave of dark, sickly-sweet mana washed over him. The scent of ozone intensified. This was not the normal instability of a cleared dungeon.
This was the beginning of a Dungeon Break.
He felt his new Soul Force pulse, and a thread of pure black energy—his Shadow Affinity—snapped toward a weakened floor panel.
$$Next Trial Initiating: Escaping the Break.$$
Akira pressed his hand against the wall and ran, the whispers of the threads guiding his every step. The shadows of the Grotto seemed to cheer him on, or maybe they were just waiting for him to fail.
He would not fail. Miyuki died for him to live. He would live for his niece.
In the deep, dark heart of the Flickering Grotto, the Boss began to stir, sensing the new and unique energy of the Arbiter's Codex.